Vincent tries to be a novelist, a broker by day and a writer by night, Raphaëlle is an architect. They have lost the enthusiasm of youth. Raphaëlle seeks in vain to escape Vincent's decline, who destroys himself with alcohol.

Paris is changing at such a speed that the city leaves many a man in the cold.Old buildings near decay are destroyed,replaced by modern ones ,which are not more hospitable for all that. In a flood of people, we follow some characters who sometimes meet but do not communicate .All these human beings' are holding conversations which always remain incomplete .Even the educated persons cannot avoid isolation and despair: the architect urges her lover,a journalist and a doomed writer,to give up drinking but he does not feel like living anymore because "my work is absurd". And those who enjoy a simple happiness , an old couple ,see their life destroyed :they have to leave their old flat and to settle down in the suburbs because the old lady could not live in those high buildings ;they lose all their friends but as the old lady sadly says :"that's the way it goes" .—dbdumonteil